Yoga Ban

What is yoga? The Indians started it, some Buddhist and Taoist monks practice it. It is simply a form of body exercise. Twisting your legs, hands and body here and there until it is hard to disentangle them. You can sleep upside down and towards the later stage when you begin to embrace mediation, you can fly like David Copperfield. No joke, yogis when they reach a high level of consciousness can experience astral travel and body lightness.

The National Fatwa Council prohibits Muslims from practicing it. Their reasons are “yoga had been practiced by the Hindu community for thousands of years and incorporated physical movements, religious elements together with chants and worshipping, with the aim of being one with God”.

Some of our leaders rejected the ban as long as it does not deviate Muslims from their religion. Muslims from Singapore and Egypt are prohibited from practicing yoga but the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) is not against it.

If a yoga practitioner chants “God help me, God protect me” as she does a difficult posture, I do not think it “is a step towards erosion of one’s faith in the religion”.